


01000001 Tales of Siberian Nights

by ceealaina, feyrelay



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2019 [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, M/M, Moodboards, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, Silver Fox, Tony Stark Bingo 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 12:13:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20470844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceealaina/pseuds/ceealaina, https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyrelay/pseuds/feyrelay
Summary: COMPLETE.Or, alternatively, Five Times The Winter Soldier Glitched Out, and One Time Bucky Barnes Understood PerfectlyA 'Maria Lives' AU told in vignettes.Cee's Fills: [Fills my Tony Stark bingo squares "Holiday Fic" in ch 1, Bucky Barnes Bingo "Old Ghosts" in ch 3, and Tony Stark Bingo "Missing You" in ch 5.]Fey's Fills: [Fills my Tony Stark bingo squares A5 "FRIDAY" in ch 2, K3 "Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier" in ch 4, and A2 "AU: Sci-Fi/Futuristic" in ch 6.] **and A1 "Silver-Haired Tony" for the moodboard, x-posted to Pillowfort.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0UFSUWaTE6J0wSuyTAjkwj?si=ZqKcV0IPT5iRkwOM4WVCKQ).

The soldier never hesitated, not in shooting out the tires, not in approaching the wreckage which smoked already, and threatened at flames. He didn’t think, didn’t feel, didn’t falter, not even when the target called him Sergeant Barnes, claimed to know him. He moved to the other side of the car, grasping the woman by her throat, waiting for her gasps to cease.

And then something happened. The wind shifted, and amidst the smell of oil and burnt rubber, the scent of her perfume wafted under his face. The soldier blinked, shaking his head to dispel the image of a young girl with long dark curls tied up in a scarf as she laughed at him, teasing and familiar. 

“Becca?” the solder breathed before rearing back from the secondary target, long since gone unconscious beneath him. She wasn’t Becca—not that he knew who Becca was—but still. He took a step back from her, staring at the hands he’d just had wrapped around around neck. And then another step, and another, until he was back on his bike and driving away as fast as he could, questioning himself for the first time that he could remember. 

Time blurred then, the way it always did if he wasn’t actively tracking it. The soldier had no need of time; there was the mission, and there was waiting for his mission. It would take as long as it took, until he was told otherwise.

He didn’t think to question why being told should be so much more compelling than the visceral, sharp feel of wind on his face, or his dead sister’s perfume in his nose.

***

Tony rushed down the hall after the SHIELD agents, feeling dazed and nauseated. He’d just seen his parents a couple hours ago, had kissed his mom good-bye and crawled back into bed only to be jolted awake to a banging on the front door and two agents telling him they’d been in some kind of accident. They wouldn’t give him any more information but Tony knew that the telling was in the not-telling, that if they were okay there wouldn’t be any of this cloak-and-dagger bullshit. Refusing to say anything could only mean…

He swallowed hard against the lump in his throat and dug his fingernails into the palm of his hand because he was _ not _ going to cry here, not at SHIELD. He just wished that _ anyone _ were here with him, that Jarvis wasn’t visiting family in England, that he was here to help Tony understand what the fuck was going on because he couldn’t _ focus_. 

They came to an abrupt stop, and before he could ask (again) what was going on, a door opened and Peggy Carter was stepping through. Tony’s knees nearly buckled in relief and her eyes went soft as she glanced over at him. 

“Thank you, gentlemen,” she said, all business again as she turned to the agents. “We’ll take it from here.” 

When they were gone, Peggy curled an arm around Tony’s waist, leading him through the door she’d come through and down another hall, and he leaned against her gratefully. 

“Aunt Peggy?” he whispered, clearing his throat when his voice cracked over her name. “Is… Are they…?” 

Then he froze as Peggy opened a door to some conference room, revealing a familiar figure pacing near a covered window. 

“_Mom_?” 

Maria spun at the sound of his voice and then Tony was across the room, arms wrapped around her and face buried against her neck. Her heels were gone, leaving her barely taller than Tony, but she somehow managed to fold him into her arms anyway.

“Shh,” she soothed, rubbing his back as Tony’s breath hitched. “Shh, _ cuore mio_. It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.” 

He pulled back a bit, glancing around the room, but Maria was alone. Feeling something knot deep in his stomach, he met her gaze. “Where’s Dad?” 

Maria didn’t answer, didn’t have to, the expression in her eyes saying everything. Tony held her tighter, and closed his eyes. 

_ Thank you, thank you, thank you, _ he thought, and held on.

***

Fifteen minutes later found them seated around a too-large conference table, Tony’s head pounding, listening as his mother told them what had happened, what her fuzzy memory could recall of a masked man killing Howard, how he had then grabbed Maria by the throat before, apparently, having a change of heart. As Peggy told them how she’d suspected something was wrong for a while, how she no longer knew who she could trust within SHIELD, how she’d realized Howard may have been a target when she was following them, shown up too late to save Howard, to see the assassin, but in enough time to get Maria out—and make it look like she hadn’t. 

The words barely made sense to Tony; for all his genius he couldn’t seem to process what was going on. All he knew was that he was down a parent (half an orphan, he thought to himself, and had to fight back a burst of inexplicable, hysterical laughter), and he couldn’t lose his mother too.

“Who knows?” he asked suddenly, voice sounding harsh to his own ears. Peggy blinked at him, and he had maybe cut her off but found he didn’t quite care. “Who knows that Mamma…” He cleared his throat, and Maria covered his hand with hers. “That she’s still alive?” 

“As of this moment? Everyone in this room.”

“Good,” Tony said. “Good. We keep it that way.”

Peggy and Maria both blinked at him. “Tony…” Peggy started. 

“No,” Tony said, more forcefully than he’d intended. “This wasn’t a hit and run. What if they come back? Whoever is behind this doesn’t seem like they’d be the kind to leave loose ends. If they find out you’re alive… whatever stopped it this time might not happen again.”

“Anthony.” Maria pulled him to face her. “I know you’re scared; I am too. But this is… How long could we possibly keep that up for?” 

“As long as it takes.” He looked to Peggy, hoping for some kind of backup, here. “Until we figure out who’s behind this and how to stop them.” 

“Tony…” 

“Mamma, _ please_.” 

“He’s not wrong,” Peggy piped up, and Tony felt some of the tension in his chest ease. “It’s not ideal, but… Keeping you hidden, keeping this secret is the best way we can keep you safe. And it might give us the chance to root out who’s behind this once and for all.”

***

Which was how Tony and Maria found themselves preparing to spend Christmas alone in their big, empty house. Jarvis had been called, of course, advised of Howard and Maria’s tragic deaths, and the pained sound he had made and the rawness of his voice when he asked Tony if he was alright would haunt Tony for the rest of his days. Tony hated that he hadn’t been able to warn him about the truth, but while he and Peggy had gone through the house with a fine-toothed comb to check for surveillance, they couldn’t be sure the phones weren’t being tapped on Jarvis’s end. He’d promised to be home as soon as possible, had made Tony promise not to take anything and not to do anything rash until he was back. But he’d been waylaid by storms grounding all the flights, and so until then it was just Tony and Maria on their own. 

Tony didn’t think he’d ever been so conscious of just how _ big _ the house was before. While it never entirely felt like _ his _ home, it had always been full of life before. Jarvis and Ana, cooking and cleaning and scolding him gently when he got too wound up. Maria with her entourage of charity ladies, or on the phone, planning her parties and galas and charity events. Howard yelling at Tony more often than not, but still _ here_. 

Now it was just the two of them, surrounded by overwhelming silence. Maria had taken to sitting in the conservatory, staring out at the snow, and though she always had a soft smile for Tony, her eyes were sad. The annual Stark Christmas party had been cancelled, of course, but there were no decorations at all, no tree, no sparkling Swarovski crystal icicles, not even the terrible Santa drawing that Tony had made when he was four and Maria insisted on putting up every year to Howard’s eternal irritation. It was like no one lived in the house at all, and Tony couldn’t help wondering if he was slowly losing his mind.

He knew that they couldn’t tell anyone that Maria was alive, that he was the one who’d been absolutely insistent on that fact, but couldn’t help wishing there was someone else to help him shoulder this. Tony knew without even having to think about it that if Rhodey had been there he would have spilled everything to him in a heartbeat, and probably been glad to do it. 

Unfortunately—or probably not, actually—Rhodey was stationed hundreds of miles away, had just been promoted to First Lieutenant, which meant there was no possible way he could get time off, not when Tony wasn’t even “real” family, not without risking everything he’d been working for. 

Rhodey had apologized for this over and over when he’d called upon hearing the news (through the media, because Tony couldn’t make the call himself, couldn’t make himself say the words that Maria was dead, in case saying them somehow changed the past, somehow made it true after all). He’d sounded half ready to say ‘fuck the Air Force’ and take off anyway, but Tony had talked him down, not wanting him to risk his future for this, for _ Tony, _especially when Tony was holding back the truth from him. Rhodey had asked him if he was okay over and over, had begged him to go somewhere else, to stay with his godfather maybe, or in a hotel, anywhere so that he wasn’t “rattling around that big musty house with just you and your dad’s Scotch collection.” Tony hadn’t bothered pointing out that the Scotch collection was his now. 

When Rhodey had accepted that he wasn’t going to leave, he’d switched to promising to check in as often as he possibly could, had made Tony promise to answer the phone as soon as he called because “_not _ picking up the phone goes to _ can’t _ pick up the phone real fast in my mind.” 

Tony couldn’t even be embarrassed about that, had just promised Rhodey he’d answer, that he’d take care of himself, and then they’d disconnected the call and it was just he and Maria, alone again. 

The days seemed to meld together. Maria had always been his favourite parent; there wasn’t much of a competition when Howard was the alternative, but for as awful as Howard had been, she had been wonderful. Now though, Tony felt like he didn’t know what to say to her. She was grieving Howard when Tony felt like he couldn’t really do the same. Of course even in death he’d find a way to ruin things. So Tony retreated to his lab, working until he couldn’t keep his eyes open and then downing caffeine to start all over again. He lost minutes, then hours, then days, and then all of a sudden it was Christmas. 

Christmas Day was cloudy and bitterly cold, too cold to even snow. The sky and the ground were the same colour, a cold depressing grey that Tony couldn’t help but think was fitting as he hesitated in the conservatory doorway, looking out through the large windows. 

“Mom?” he asked softly. It was early, and he had thought she might be asleep, but she made a soft noise and turned to face him with a sad smile. 

“Merry Christmas, Tony,” she told him softly, and Tony felt his throat constrict. 

“I, um… I know everything’s different now, and maybe… I dunno, maybe it wasn’t right, but…” He waved the package in his hand, moving closer. “I made you something? For Christmas.” 

Maria’s smile grew a little less sad and she took the gift from him and Tony dropped to sit on the footstool. “Not much of a Christmas, is it darling?” she asked, reaching beside her chair. “I did get this out though.” 

She passed him his drawing of Santa, the one that looked a little terrifying in its expensive mahogany frame, and it was stupid… there was no reason for it to affect him the way it was, but his hands were shaking as he took it, eyes welling up until he couldn’t see the image. He sniffed hard, biting hard at his lip, and a low, sad sound escaped from his throat. He met his mother’s eyes, saw his tears reflected there, and she hummed soothingly. 

“It’s okay, Tony.” 

Tony found himself on his knees, face pressed to Maria’s lap as he sobbed and he was too old for this, he wasn’t a five-year-old with a robot that Howard had broken, but Maria’s fingers stroking through his hair made him feel safer than he had in days. 

“It’s okay,” she told him again, repeating her words from SHIELD. “I know you’re trying to protect me, and I love you so much. But I’m still your mother, I’m still going to take care of you too.” She kept stroking her fingers through his hair, humming nonsense. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.” 


	2. Chapter 2

And they were. Okay, that is. She said they would be okay and so they were.

Maria had lied to her son many times as he was growing up, little things like about storks bringing babies (when Tony was still young enough to want a sibling) and “no, your father doesn’t mean it” (once Tony was old enough not to wish for another child to share in his pain). This, though, now. Now that Howard was gone, Maria had vowed to herself that she’d not lie to Tony again. 

Now, she _ was _ the lie.

It got lonely, of course it did. Especially as a year became two, became five, became the 2000s instead of the 90s. Maria, sequestered as she was in a house wired to the gills with security measures, had absolutely no fear of Y2K or whatever nonsense people spouted about the endtimes. She’d _ seen _ the end, felt its grip on her throat even as she squinted through smoke. The end had let her go.

Still, because nothing is ever easy, the age of Aquarius dawned without Jarvis. She felt his loss keenly. It seemed not right, never right, but.. fitting?... somehow that Edwin contain himself strictly to the 20th century, and not join her in the 21st. It suited him, and she took the barest sliver of comfort in that.

For Christmas, Tony gave her JARVIS, the AI version. He’d look after her, keep her company as she continued her studies. Since Howard’s death, Maria had so much time on her hands. She’d picked up her piano practice again and had the skills now to give a truly spectacular concert, if only she had an audience. She took correspondence courses in anything she could dream of, from color theory to abnormal psychology to kinesiology. She had a truly towering collection of cookbooks and was getting started on writing her own.

Being a secret shut-in was good for her productivity, and bad for her soul.

Slowly, Maria felt as if she was becoming part of the furniture or the yellow wallpaper, just another built-in part of the house. Tony visited often but he was also busy, either working or working himself over (or both). Between her psych training and the way Tony, too, sometimes forgot she was there, like an end table that one bumps into and apologizes to before realizing, well. She was in the perfect position to observe as he unraveled.

Howard’s death had affected her more so than Tony, but her son was far from immune, especially once the reality hit and he was asked to take over the company. He shouldered so much alone, his closest friend, Captain (or was it Major, now?) Rhodes, frequently busy with his military career. Obadiah guided Tony with a steady, firm hand and Maria was grateful, though as time passed she wondered if Tony didn’t give Stane too much of himself. She wondered if her son did so because he felt guilty for keeping the secret of her from one of Howard’s closest friends, or if Tony merely figured it was easiest to give Obie whatever he wanted… lest the man take it anyway.

Regardless, JARVIS saw Maria through the first year of a new millennium and Pepper Potts, a new hire, saw Tony through the same. The next year in 2001, Maria learned HTML because she thought Tony might get a kick out of it. Tony learned that no amount of drunken proposals or coked-out monologues would prevail upon Pepper or Rhodey to marry him. And, then, in September, the world learned what it was to be afraid again. Tony, one month sober, used JARVIS to lock her out of watching the news on television, but Maria was older and wiser than him, though not _ technically _ smarter (if you threw in for the validity of IQ tests). Regardless, she didn’t need a television to find out what she wanted to find out.

Halfway through listening to coverage of all that was dead or dying or readying itself for war in Manhattan, she remembered the old, wood-paneled radio had been Howard’s, once upon a time.

Maybe that was fitting, too.

***

Roughly a decade and a half later, FRIDAY was born, and Maria joked that Tony finally got his baby sister and then they ‘fought’ over whether FRIDAY was Maria’s daughter or her granddaughter. It was true that Tony did most of it, but Maria had successfully come a long way from HTML. She _ helped. _

Over time, things had become ever so slightly more relaxed. After the fall of SHIELD and the outing of the Winter Soldier to the public, Maria was ostensibly safer than ever. Sure, she remembered (now, after decades of reflection) the gleam of metal, the sensation of falling unconscious and not expecting to wake. Her fear was as valid as ever, but it wasn’t _ fresh. _

Sometimes she came to the city, now. She traveled with Rhodey at night and was allowed a few days away from The House, and stepped into Tony’s space in the Tower. He didn’t bring anyone home except Pepper, who had known about Maria for years.

It was hard-fought and hard-won, but Maria was alive and she had her son and a few of his closest friends and an AI that she helped build. She had a mastery of the piano and a master’s degree in counseling, both useless of course, and yet. And yet, Maria Stark née Carbonell was so, so grateful. _ La vita è bella. _

Tony even let her give feedback on some of his designs, too. She tested the… VR… glasses (she refused to use the vomitous acronym, she was a _ lady_). They worked well, though she had no doubt that a mind such as Tony’s would be unsuccessfully therapized using such a tool; he was too smart not to find a mental workaround to avoid confronting anything the glasses might be able to show him. _ They’d work best, _ she thought, _ on someone who didn’t quite understand the technology that makes them function. _

She tested the glasses for a few more minutes, put them through their paces, then decided to play for a bit. The VR technology took Maria back in time, to Dallas in 1963. She and Howard had been there, of course. Honored guests of President Kennedy, even. 

If the files that FRIDAY hadn’t been supposed to let her see are true, then she’d been maybe a couple of thousand feet from the man who would kill her husband, nearly thirty years later.

She wondered if Jackie had been a target, too. Maybe The Winter Soldier got cold feet more frequently than anyone would ever suspect.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony stared at the screen in front of him, feeling a migraine coming on. The last few days had been a complete shitshow, with the Accords, and Steve going rogue to track down his brainwashed assassin bestie. And now he was freezing his ass off in some Siberian bunker, while some absolute lunatic showed them his home movies. 

Then he did a double take at the screen. “What the fuck,” he mumbled to himself, catching Steve give him a strange look in his peripheral. Tony ignored him, staring down the grainy footage. “I know this road.”

He’d watched this scene hundreds, maybe thousands of times, helping Peggy to doctor the tape to make his mother appear dead, trying to puzzle out who the assassin could be, who was behind this… before everything that had happened with Project Insight had made that startlingly, shiningly clear. 

He still felt nauseated every single time. 

But he was Tony goddamn Stark, and he may have been ready to throw Steve Rogers back into the Atlantic, but he’d be damned if he’d let this Zemo asshole cause any further damage to everything they’d built with the Avengers. He watched the footage with the most impassive expression he could muster, focusing on his breathing to keep from puking and ignoring the soft, pained noise that Barnes made, the way that Steve had shifted into protective fight mode. 

When the screen went dark again, Tony drew in a slow breath, mind working overtime as he tried to come up with something resembling a plan here. Blinking once, he turned to look past Steve at Zemo. “Okay?”

If nothing else, he seemed to have finally caught the fucker off guard. “Okay?” Zemo repeated, staring back at him with furious incredulity. “_Okay _?” 

Tony shrugged, saw Steve tense at the movement and barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re expecting me to say, here.” 

Zemo’s eyes bugged. “Captain Rogers has spent the past few days throwing away everything for the sake of one man,” Zemo spit, like Tony hadn’t been physically present for it. “This man killed your parents, Stark.” 

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. 

“Tony…” Steve’s voice was a warning, and Tony was going to need such a long vacation after this. Also, possibly, an Academy Award.

Ignoring Steve, Tony turned to face Barnes. The other man was gritting his teeth, staring back at Tony with wide, wet, exhausted eyes. The grip on his gun was loose, arms at his side, leaving himself open to attack, and the sight made something funny twist in Tony’s stomach, something he quickly shoved aside. Steve was too hyper-focused on Barnes to see anything else, but Barnes… Barnes had spent the past few decades dealing in secrets and manipulation. Tilting his head ever so slightly, he made pointed eye contact with the man. 

“Yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes in the direction of Zemo’s little hideout. “Sure looks that way.” 

The tiniest of furrows appeared between Barnes’s eyebrows, and his eyes flicked briefly over to Zemo. Then, almost imperceptibly, the fingers of his right hand shifted against his thigh, tips of his thumb and index fingers meeting in a circle that left his other three fingers out straight. 

Satisfied, Tony turned back in the direction of Zemo and Steve. “Or, you know… Like somebody is trying really hard to make it look that way.” 

Tony did his best to act like he wanted to kill Zemo, to be the biggest threat in the room so that Zemo would look at_ him_, playing it to Steve like, “Well how do we know he’s not HYDRA? He obviously activated the soldier in Austria…”

Steve appeared to be taking his bluster quite seriously, and Tony was unsure if Rogers was on the up-take yet or not, as Barnes snuck the opposite way. It wasn’t Steve’s attention Tony was concerned about, in that moment, however.

“That_ is _ what happened right?” he directs at Zemo, wanting the villain’s eyes on him. On him _ only. _ To Steve, he plowed on, “How could he know how to do that if he’s not a HYDRA agent? This is the most ridiculous plan I’ve ever heard of, it must be a cover. Simpler to just kill him here. Nobody will ever know, ya know?“ he bantered, willing Steve to _ get it. _

But ah, it hadn’t mattered. Barnes made it. Tony smiled at that, and at Steve’s little moue of confusion at Tony’s mood swings from murderous to merciful. To Zemo, Tony added gleefully, “Also, he’s right behind you.”

Barnes struck, obediently following his cue. Tony could appreciate that.

***

It was kind of satisfying, Tony couldn’t help but think when it was all said and done, that Steve had apparently never seen Barnes move either. Zemo had been forcibly removed, apprehended, and carted off by T’Challa, who had apparently followed them, heard everything, and promptly booked it the fuck out of there, deciding that they still had some things to work out amongst the three of them. Tony couldn’t have said he was wrong, but it didn’t mean he was looking forward to it. So, he found a sort of sick sense of amusement at how flabbergasted—one might even say put out—Steve seemed at the idea that Tony and said brainwashed bestie could communicate so effectively without bringing him into the loop. 

When the three of them were left standing in the bunker, Tony aggressively removed the tape from the player because he didn’t need any more copies of _ that _ floating around. Also, it helped him ignore the way that Steve was pacing around, clearly agitated. 

“You _ knew_?” Steve blurted out suddenly, pacing coming to an abrupt stop. 

Tony stilled for a moment. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Steve looking shocked before, in true Rogers fashion, he dug his feet in and prepared for a fight. 

“Yup,” Tony drawled, voice cold as he hauled the tape out and tossed it in the air, pulverizing it with a shot from the gauntlet. He straightened, meeting Steve’s eyes steadily. “And apparently you did too.” 

Steve blinked at that, his ‘fight’ expression dissolving. “I didn’t, I mean… I didn’t _ know_.” He glanced over at Bucky, who was watching them both with wary eyes. “I didn’t know it was him.” 

It was bullshit, and Tony knew it. He may not have had definitive proof, but from the moment Zola had implied his parents’ murder was an assassination, Steve would have known. But the last few days had taken their toll, and Tony was so tired of fighting. 

“You should have told me, Steve,” he said, no real heat in his voice. “I _ trusted _you, for fuck’s sake.” 

Steve’s shield arm kept shifting, like he wanted to lift it and didn’t know what to do with himself when there was no actual, physical threat. “You just said you already knew,” he protested, and across the room Barnes made a noise like even _ he _ knew that was the wrong answer. 

“That’s not the point!” Tony burst out. Steve’s arm came up again, and Tony rolled his eyes. “Would you stop? I’m not going to physically fight you, Steve. Not again.”

Steve looked like he didn’t know what to do with this information. 

“Yeah,” Tony continued. “Yeah, I knew. But _ you _ didn’t know that I knew, and that’s the point. You were quite happy to just let me go around thinking my dad’s drinking had finally caught up to him and taken my mom along with him.” 

“It’s… no,” Steve protested, face pale. “It wasn’t like that. I just… couldn’t find the time to bring it up.” 

“Really?” Tony just blinked in the face of Steve’s obvious discomfort. “You couldn’t find a single moment to say, ‘oh hey, by the way Tony, your parents’ accident was on purpose, and also? My brainwashed murder boyfriend may have been behind it’? Sure, it’s a mouthful, but I was raised on stories of you giving longer speeches for less.”

“I’m not his boyfriend...” Bucky murmured suddenly, and both Steve and Tony turned to stare at him. 

“Really, Buck?” Steve mumbled, rubbing at the back of his neck. “That’s what you choose to focus on here?” 

Bucky shrugged, looking deeply uncomfortable with the fact that he had spoken up. “Seemed important to point out,” he muttered to the floor. 

Tony just shook his head, and turned back to Steve. “You owed me that much as your friend, Rogers. But even if that’s not what we were…”

Steve’s head shot up. “Of course we’re friends, Tony!” 

Tony managed to keep from rolling his eyes again. “Even if, though, you owed me that as your teammate. What would have happened, if Zemo’s stars had aligned and I hadn’t known, if I’d no idea that my dad—my _ parents _—had been murdered? If I found out by watching firsthand and realized that you had known the entire time? How do you think this whole thing would have played out then?” 

Steve shifted uncomfortably. 

“The worst part is, I could have helped you. Come on, Steve. If anyone was going to understand being kidnapped, and tortured, and forced to do things… If you had just come to me, and explained… I would have understood. And I could have helped you find him, helped you break the brainwashing.” He chanced a glance over at Bucky. “If that’s what he wanted. You don’t have to like me, Steve, but you do have to trust me.” 

“I do like you!” Steve protested. “And I trust you. I just… it’s Bucky. Waking up in the future was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve almost died… a lot. You’ve all been wonderful, but there was a part of me that just never felt like I quite belonged here, that kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. When I realized Bucky might have been alive, what had been done to him, what I could have _ prevented_? I couldn’t see anything else.” 

“Yeah, well…” Tony felt sympathy for the man, he really did, but excuses weren’t apologies. “That’s why I told you to look into therapy _ four years ago_.” 

“I don’t trust the SHIELD therapists.” 

Tony sighed more heavily than was really needed, pinching the bridge of his nose to stave off his headache. “I _ barely _know how to dignify that with a response. It’s almost like there are other, non-SHIELD therapists out. Ones vetted by me personally, even.” 

“I didn’t think of that,” Steve admitted. 

“Yeah, seems to be your go-to response.”

Steve gave him a Look at that, but to Tony’s surprise, didn’t snark back. He shifted instead, staring down at the floor. “I just, the thing is… You’re uh…” He scraped a hand through his hair and drew in a deep breath, voice dropping to little more than a mumble. “You’re maybe right.”

Tony stared at him for a long moment. “I’m sorry, what was that?” 

Steve rolled his eyes and glared at him, but after the frustration of the past few days, Tony was taking a small bit of satisfaction in watching Steve squirm. The man had many talents, but apologies weren’t one of them. 

“I said, you’re right. You may have a point. I did get tunnel vision, and I was so focused on what I wanted, I mean… I thought I was doing what was best, but I didn’t stop to consider… What was that thing you were telling me about unlimited universes? There’s probably one somewhere where this went way worse, and that could have been here, and I just, I mean. I wanted to— ”

“Jesus Christ, Stevie.”

Fighting back a snort, Tony looked over at Bucky, trying to remind himself that this was the man who had killed his father, had almost killed his mother. Bucky was staring at Steve with a pained expression on his face, but as Tony turned he met his gaze and rolled his eyes skyward.

“Just spit it out already.” 

Steve straightened and drew his shoulders back, steeling himself like this was the worst foe he’d ever faced. “I was wrong, and I’m sorry.” 

Tony had expected a few words to actually make a difference, and maybe it was the obvious pain it caused Steve to admit them, but he felt better hearing it. He offered Steve a tentative smile and rolled his eyes fondly. “Yeah, yeah. All is forgiven and whatnot and so forth.” He shifted his gaze to stare at the spot where the tape had been. “The one thing I still can’t figure out is how the fuck HYDRA knew he had those serum samples in the car. There was no record of them anywhere. Dad had some meetings, but they were supposed to be on _ vacation_. He was many things, but he loved my mom. Shouldn’t have had her in the car at all, but if he did… He would have been careful, taken precautions, not trusted anyone.” 

Bucky made a low noise at that, and Tony and Steve both looked over to see shudder all over, eyes rolling back briefly before squinting shut. “Only trust you with this,” he mumbled, sounding far off.

“Buck?” Steve asked, taking a few tentative steps toward him, but Bucky just waved him off.

“I’m okay, I just...” He shook his head, lank hair moving with the motion. “No, no, there was a man, too. Who... He smelled like cigars, he. Told 'em everything. Had a Mayberry name."

Tony looked at Steve, mouth a line. "Wanna translate?"

"That's after my time, I think-"

"No, no. Stevie he did, he had a Mayberry name, I r'member 'cause it was funny but not happy and they- I mean I could keep it if it wasn't too happy you know, the memory. He called himself. Like the boy. Opie."

Though it shouldn’t have surprised him at this point, Tony felt his stomach drop. "Obie?"

"Yeah."

Tony swallowed hard, fighting the urge to puke. Nearly a decade later, and the depths of Obie’s betrayal never failed to hit him like a gut punch. He heard Steve curse under his breath and Tony squinted, rubbing his forehead and hating everything about this. “Yeah, no, that makes sense. Dad _ did _ trust him with everything. We all did.” 

Bucky was looking at Steve with a question in his eyes, but Steve shook his head quickly, giving him a ‘later’ motion with his hand. When Tony looked over at him, his face was pale. “I’m really sorry, Tony,” he offered, and Tony couldn’t help thinking it was hilarious how easily Steve could apologize for things that weren’t actually his fault. 

He waved him off, managing a tight smile. “No, it’s… not _ fine, _ but at least now I know. It’s always bothered me,” he added, half to himself.

It was quiet for a long moment, the silence seeming to echo through the room. Then Steve blew out a long breath. 

“So what the fuck do we do now?” 

Bucky shrugged. “Go back? Turn myself in? Maybe this time I won’t go on a killing spree.”

Steve looked apoplectic at that, and Tony found himself agreeing. “Not the best idea,” he admitted, before Steve could have a total meltdown. “May be better to lay low, until we can gather some proof of innocence, maybe get the rest of the team out of Ross’s grip first…”

He was grateful that Steve refrained himself from blaming Tony for their incarceration in the first place, looking to him to continue instead. “Where do we do that?” 

Tony scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, in the interest of trust and sharing, and trying to practice what I preach and all that… There’s probably something you should know about the accident…” 


	4. Chapter 4

The secondary target was alive. (Bucky hadn’t killed Maria Stark, thank _ God-_)

But, no, that’s not right. Because he completed the mission. Missions are completed when all targets have been eliminated. Target was not eliminated. Mission is… complete?

Clarification needed. “Steve?”

Steve was not his handler but he was not-not-his-handler. Bucky was not his asset. Bucky was not his boyfriend, specifically. That was important to remember, Rumlow had said so.

The asset was not Steve Rogers's boyfriend. Bucky was not the asset, but when Rumlow addressed the asset, he was to listen, too. Words sounded like numbers, tasted like meat.

“Is this. Is she?” (My new mission? My old mission?)

Steve’s dumbass face was tender as Stark looked on. Bucky said ‘dumbass’ because you’d have to be one dumb punk to look at the asset as a friendly. “See? She’s alive. You didn’t kill her. Small mercies.”

_ Mercy ain’t got nothing to do with it, _ Bucky thinks, even as the asset speaks. “Mission was completed? Or have mission parameters changed?” The arm flexed, and Stark flinched.

(Wait. No. He wishes someone would count him out, bring him fully back up from the tar.)

Stark looked concerned. “Damn, they really ripped the cord right out of your gourd, eh? Talk about a hard reboot.”

(It’s starting to look a lot like he’s gonna have to count _ himself _ out. Tar preserves but it also drowns.)

Steve hushed him, then explained. “Mission’s over, Buck. All that’s over with,” he reminds him, as if Bucky doesn’t _ know _ that.

It’s not that he doesn’t _ know_, he’s not _ stupid. _ Not knowing ain’t the problem… it’s more like he knows two, conflicting things and he knows them each with equal fervor. He looks at Stark and Steve and the woman and thinks, _ If only I could pick just one thing to believe. _

Conflict resolution required. “Yeah, but. You’re sure? Mission was completed?”

(Freight car, one, homecoming, nine…)

It’s Tony that spoke, though. Softly, he said, “Yeah. Um. End protocol, does that help?”

It did help. Now he could be really sure… protocol ends after mission completes after targets are eliminated. S’amazing, how lifelike she was, though.

“Yeah. That helps. Gosh, Stevie, but you told me about the Life Model Decoy thing, I thought it was a _ joke. _”

The decoy coughed delicately.

*

It took several days to resolve that error, but. Gradually he came to understand that two things can be true at the same time, can contradict each other, and it’s fine. The asset was to accept it and move on, especially when there were other factors to consider like cover (Stark had offered him his home), and avoiding detection (Ross was still looking to collar him), and medical treatment (the asset had a strange pain in his gut that only abated when he looked at the decoy—at Maria. Or at Tony _with_ Maria.)

Stark had muttered at him, pointedly, “Jesus Christ, Bicentennial Man. File an error report, dump your data, and _ relax about it_.”

And that had made a hell of a lot of sense to the Winter Soldier, and Bucky Barnes besides.

Maria Stark was alive _ and _ the mission was complete. He could have both.

_ Thank you, thank you, thank you, _ he thought, and held on.


	5. Chapter 5

Maria had been sitting in the library, reading, but went stock still when a shadow appeared in the doorway, Sergeant Barnes—Bucky, she corrected herself. He’d insisted—shuffling into the room. He hesitated just inside the door, no doubt hearing the way that her heart started to race at the sight of him. Being near him set her on edge; all these years later, she could still feel that hand around her throat. But she knew that hadn’t been him, not really, and so she’d been as insistent as he was over his name that she spend time with him, try to force away that fear through exposure. 

She couldn’t tell if it was working.

Drawing in a deep breath to try and slow her heart rate, she gave him a smile. It was the press smile she’d perfected when she had married Howard, the same one that Tony had learned from her, but then Bucky might not notice the difference. “Help yourself to any of the titles,” she offered. “Books are meant to be read, and these don’t get nearly enough use. Neither Tony nor his father were ever much for reading. Tony loved stories, but he would much rather have you read  _ to _ him while he fiddled around with another circuit board or invention.” 

She didn’t miss the way he flinched a little at the mention of Howard, but he also gave a faint echo of her smile at the mention of Tony as a child. “Thanks,” he mumbled, barely more than a whisper, and wandered deeper into the library, trying to make himself as small as possible as he glanced over the titles on the shelves. 

Maria turned back to her book then, but it was hard to focus when Bucky was there, and she found herself reading the same sentence over and over again. She didn’t look up, having a feeling he would start apologizing again, or leave if he thought he was disturbing her. She was thinking of another story about Tony—stories about her loquacious son as an only slightly less loquacious child seemed to calm him—when Bucky spoke up. 

“You know I was drafted?” 

His voice was quiet, barely seemed to be speaking to her, and Maria blinked at the page before looking up at him. Bucky was returning her gaze, still focused on the bookshelf in front of him, and she had no idea what had triggered that line of thought. She didn’t speak, not sure if she was even meant to have heard, and the silence dragged on for a long moment before he spoke again. 

“I, uh… I never told Stevie. I dunno, maybe he knew anyway, but after I got the notice I went out, reported at the local office, then came home and told him I’d signed up.” He’d huffed out a laugh, the sound bitter. “He’d been after me to do it for ages. We used t’have the worst arguments over it, really knock ‘em down fights. It drove him crazy. The one thing he wanted most, and here I was able and willing and refusing to go. And all I could think was ‘if I go over there, who the fuck is gonna look out for you, ya dumb punk?’ Thought he’d be bleeding out in an alley within a week, and I wouldn’t even get a letter because it ain’t like we were family.” 

He turned in Maria’s direction then, but his eyes were far away and distant, somewhere else entirely.

“Never forget the look on his face when I told him. Furious, of course, because for all his getting after me, he was jealous as hell that I’d be accepted when he wasn’t. But he was so proud too.” He blinked, and his gaze focused on hers. “Never quite got over that, the guilt of him being proud of me for something I didn’t even do.” He turned back to the books. “How’s that for fucking irony? All Steve wanted to do was to fight. Then I get forced over there, and it was so much worse than I ever could’ve imagined and all I could think about was getting back home.”

Maria stared down at her book, her throat feeling thick. When she looked up again, Bucky had gone. 


	6. Chapter 6

“Mamma?” 

Maria had been making pasta from scratch (one of the few upsides to the abrupt change her life had taken had been getting to spend time in the kitchen again) but she looked up at the sound of Tony’s voice. He was hovering in the kitchen doorway, fingers drumming on his chest, and Maria felt her heart sink at the look on his face. He’d done his best to stay with them as long as possible, cancelling meetings and teleconferencing and trying to provide some kind of buffer. But she’d known each day that it couldn’t last, was amazed that he’d been able to put off leaving as long as he had, and it seemed their time was up. 

She gave him a faint smile. “Time for you to go?” 

Tony made a pained noise and moved over to her, wrapping his arms around her waist. Maria returned the embrace, the two of them drawing comfort from each other the way they’d gotten used to. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “I tried to put it off, but they need me back in Austria. It’ll only be a couple days, I _ promise _, and I’ve got JARVIS on high alert, and Rhodey on standby—he can be here in five minutes—and…”

“Tony, my darling. It’s alright, I promise.”

“I just hate leaving you here alone with him,” he mumbled.

Maria pulled his head down to place a gentle kiss on his forehead. “I’ll be fine,” she promised him, and when she moved to pull away, for the briefest of moments, she saw Bucky frozen in the doorway and watching with sad eyes. 

She couldn’t get the image out of her mind and so, despite every reasonable part of her body telling her to leave it alone, she found herself seeking him out later that evening while Tony was busy making preparations for his time away. He was in the suite they’d given him to stay in, and while normally she wouldn’t have encroached on his space, the door had been left wide open while he stretched out on the bed, eyes open and entirely body on alert. She tapped softly on the door jam, and Bucky’s eyes flicked over to her without a hint of surprise. 

“I, um…” Unwittingly, her eyes flicked over to the metal arm stretched out on the mattress, and Maria steeled herself against the wave of fear that went through her at the sight. “I wanted to apologize. For earlier. I know you heard Tony and I speaking. I saw your face and… I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t your fault. I promise, I’ll get used to you being here in time. We both will. Tony has always been fiercely protective of those he loves.”

To her utter surprise, Bucky’s face changed, something that could almost be a smile crossing his lips before he sat up. “It, uh… No. No, you’re probably right to be scared of me,” he told her, voice rough like he hadn’t spoken all day. “But… it wasn’t that.

“I ran away from home, once,” he told her, changing the subject abruptly. “I was just a kid, maybe five or six. Don’t even remember what I was so mad about. But I do remember my… well, I guess you’d call it a homecoming. Prodigal son and all that. Didn’t make it much past supper. Snuck into the kitchen and there was my ma, washing up after supper. She didn’t say anything, just took a plate out of the oven and set it on the table for me.” He shook his head. “All the things I’ve done, all the brainwashing and I can still remember her kissing the top of my head on her way by. Don’t think I’ve ever felt safer.” He met Maria’s eyes, his own glassy. “Guess I just missed that.” 

“I can understand that,” she admitted.

“I bet you can, ma’am.”

And for the briefest of moments, Maria wanted nothing more than to give the man who had almost murdered her a hug. 

***

It took longer, and many more talks in the library, before Tony began to feel the same as she did. (_Although, _ her inner voice points out rather archly, _ it’s not-a-hug that her son wanted to give Bucky_.)

They talked of the winter Bucky’s furnace had finally rusted out, a chip in the cast iron allowing the condensation to do its destructive work. He hadn’t been able to have Steve over for Christmas because, before the serum, Steve would have caught his death of cold.

Longing, and rusted, and furnace are linked in that way. (The punishment, the cause, and the object, but backwards.) This is how she learned that all the words are backwards, like a countdown. Tony had looked like he could kiss her, when she explained it, and they worked on the code together.

It’s also why 17-9-1 appear. Nineteen seventeen, the year James Buchanan Barnes was born, and 1971, when they’d finally introduced the watchwords. They didn’t need another Dallas, didn’t need another assasination going off-book and leaving the wife unharmed.

(Bucky buys her a pillbox hat when he goes to the Halloween store with Peter Parker, a few years on… it’s the kind of bad joke he makes sometimes, when feelings are too hard to defragment.)

(“A decoy,” he says, clear-eyed. “A decoy for my best gal.” She smiles, and Tony beams and touches the edge of Bucky’s elbow.

“Bury me in it,” she instructs. She’s a lady, but she can match her boys bad joke for bad joke any day.)

Time passed until they lived in the far-flung, silver-foiled future that the Houses of Tomorrow had always promised. Maria lived with a cyborg who only sometimes remembered that she wasn’t an android herself, and with her son who frequently went flying in what mostly amounted to a full-body combat prosthesis.They were all taken care of by an AI, who was the only one to remember to order the right kind of groceries, which were delivered by drone.

Science fiction, she supposes, could still be the fiction that truth was stranger than. The tales that fell, Scheherazade-style, from Bucky’s mouth as he haltingly gave them everything they needed to unlock his washed brain and his metal heart, so like her son’s own, certainly qualified, though they were all (she fully believed) true.

She was a person out of her own time, but so were Bucky and Tony, really. It’s a realization they came to together, and it made her glad. 

All she ever wanted was for her son to have someone who loved him and understood him in equal measure. She said as much to Bucky one memorable day, and he had just smiled.

They have more talks and then less talks, as her hearing goes a little tinny on one side. (“Just like Steve,” Bucky teased her.) Maria thanked heaven for her deafness, because now Bucky talked to Tony more and more, instead of her.

_ Thank you, thank you, thank you, _ she thought, and held on.


End file.
